Lighting w/ Flourescents

[Jose Aguirre]

Whats Up Everyone,

 

I'm shooting at a grocery store. As we all know, grocery stores use flourescents. I was wondering if it is in my best interest to:

 

1. replace the house lights with kinos or

2. can I leave the bulbs in, gel the other kinos (the ones that I'll use on the floor comng off the genny) with full green, and have my editor bring down the greens in post? If I do this, what effect will it have on the HMI that I am considering using? I'm assuming that it wont have any effect on that light since HMI's don't emit green light.

 

If I replace the house lights with my own kinos, is there any possibility of the film coming out underexposed due to them being so high off the ground? How would I find out? Should I just go into the store with my light meter beforehand or is there literature that can answer my question?

 

Thank you in advance. I truly appreciate the contributions and advice that I receive from this forum.

 

Thief :ph34r:

[Michael Nash]

Are you shooting film or video? What video camera or filmstock are you using?

 

You shouldn't have any problem getting an exposure with an exposure index of 320 or faster. 200 or slower may work depending on the lighting and the speed of the lens you're using.

 

It's a MAJOR hassle to replace the tubes in an entire grocery store -- and restore them again. Usually not worth the time and manpower unless you really NEED the proper color balance. There are those ocassions where you need to do it, but in general the easiest and simplest solution is the best one. Production will love you for making life easy and cheap for them, you get the shots you need, and come off looking like a brilliant DP. ;)

 

The easiest way to deal with it is to just let it go and fill with lights of the same color temperature. Find out what tubes are in the store. They can be anything from cool white up through warm white, anywhere from 4300 to 3000 deg. K. with different amounts of green. The meat section in particular usually has warm-balanced tubes to enhance reds and make the meat look fresh, which may not match the rest of the store. Put matching tubes in your Kinos and you're good to go. Gel your tungsten lamps with the appropriate grades of CTB and plusgreen, usually about 3/4 CTB and 1/2 green for coolwhites (your mileage may vary). HMI's will get about 1/4 CTO and 1/4 plusgreen, although I've gotten a reasonable match with 1/4 plusgreen alone.

 

Daylight and HMI's will shift toward magenta when the image is color corrected to eliminate the green, so you DO need to gel those lights if you want them to match. Color-correction changes the color balance of the ENTIRE image, not just one light source selectively (power windows and kilovectors not withstanding).

 

If you have to shoot near the windowed front of the store in the daytime you'll have mixed color temps. You could try to gel the windows with some plusgreen to better match the fluorescents, but the easiest solution is to just block the action where most of the scene is in one color temp or the other. The other solution is to just turn off the house lights and light the scene from scratch.

 

There are FL-D and FL-B camera filters which will color correct the spectrum for either tungsten or daylight balanced filmstock. These aren't absolutely necessary but they'll help the red saturation on the negative. Otherwise the green can be timed or white balanced out, at a slight compromise to rich skin tones. Some video cameras like the DVX-100 have a "fluorescent" scene file that oversaturates the reds for this purpose.

 

Check the archives for MUCH more info about fluorescents.

[John Pytlak RIP]

Being on a budget, and having an immense area to light, matching the existing fluorescents and using appropriate filtration is the way to go. The technical data for each film lists recommended filtration:

 

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/products...&lc=en#colorbal

[harryprayiv]

You might consider using Reala 500D (they used it in Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind to GREAT effect). I've been considering using Fuji Reala 500D (even though they say it's for daylight). Maybe you should do the same on this grocery location. It has the 4th layer technology that is said to react very well to flourescent lights unlike every other standard film stock in production (that I know of). Also, you can do tests with a 35 mm SLR with Fuji's still stocks that are rated at 500 as well to see how it's gonna come out because they actually make something similar to Reala 500D in a still stock. I am actually pretty curious as well, havng only started being this interested in the different effects of different film stocks. I'd like it if you could share some stills from this production with an explanation of what you ended up doing.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

I shot some fluorescents with Fuji's still film which advertises their four-layer setup - still came out green. See my other post for examples.

 

Phil

[harryprayiv]

HI. Yeah, I did see that example. I still wouldn't rule it out if you had 1/4 minus green on the lights. What do you think?

[Jose Aguirre]

Is the Fuji Reala 500D the only stock that reacts well to flourescents?

Does Kodak have any particular stock that I could use?

Being that I was planning on shooting the rest of the movie on Kodak, should I be concerned about shooting a portion of the movie on Fuji and the rest on Kodak?

 

Thanks for all your responses. I'm very happy I have you guys to fall back on.

[John Pytlak RIP]

If you filter to match the lighting, the Kodak stocks will all give good results. Opinions vary as to how effective other films are for MIXED lighting situations, as compromises in color reproduction may offset a reduced sensitivity to mixed lighting.

[harryprayiv]

Is the Fuji Reala 500D the only stock that reacts well to flourescents?

Does Kodak have any particular stock that I could use?

Being that I was planning on shooting the rest of the movie on Kodak, should I be concerned about shooting a portion of the movie on Fuji and the rest on Kodak?

 

Thanks for all your responses. I'm very happy I have you guys to fall back on.

They did a lot of color temperature mixing (sodium vapors, tungsten, flourescents) on the production of Eternal Sunshine, which is why I suggest it. The DP, Ellen Kuras, ASC, talked about the fact that this particular stock has an unusual magenta shadow shift, so it may be a problem to cut Kodak with Fuji, unless the grocery scene is an important scene in your movie or even the turning point, right?

The article about Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind in the April 2004 American Cinematographer

[Jose Aguirre]

If you filter to match the lighting, the Kodak stocks will all give good results.  Opinions vary as to how effective other films are for MIXED lighting situations, as compromises in color reproduction may offset a reduced sensitivity to mixed lighting.

John, what am I trying to achieve by filtering the camera. Is there filters that will cancel out the green created by house lights (flourescents). Basically, what will the filter be doing in this situation? Can you recommend a good filter that will do this. Or at least point me in the right direction.

[John Pytlak RIP]

The technical data for each Kodak film has the recommendations for the appropriate correction filter for each type of light source. Here are some examples:

 

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/products...&lc=en#colorbal

 

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/products...6.4&lc=en#color

 

The filter brings you close to a neutral exposure. Some fluorescent lamps have a higher "color rendering index" (less gaps in the spectrum) than others, so the color reproduction can be quite good with lamps that have a high color rendering index:

 

http://www.cinematography.net/FluorescentLamps.htm

 

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=000l44

 

http://www.lightingfacts.com/Fluorescent%20Overview.htm

 

http://www.naturallighting.com/articles/co...ender_index.htm

 

http://www.lightenergysource.com/ColorRendering.htm